


Monsoon Season

by Lookingkindofdumb



Series: A:TLA Gender Bender [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: AU: gender changes, Gen, Or just for fun, Part two of the ongoing series where I randomly reassign gender due to 'personal reasons', Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:07:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28372125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lookingkindofdumb/pseuds/Lookingkindofdumb
Summary: In all the years of searching she hadn't thought she'd be going home on the broken backs of children. Well, one child. It isn't fair, she wants to scream, but life has never been fair, just a series of impossible choices with traps waiting under every move.Or, three times Zuko finds her footing on uneven ground.
Series: A:TLA Gender Bender [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1655296
Comments: 7
Kudos: 73





	Monsoon Season

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: imperialism, canon character belief that the Fire Nation is taking over the other nations for the 'good of the world'. Canon child abuse. Canon child soldiers. Sexism and enforced gender roles in certain cultures.

Zuko breathes, in and out, in and out, carefully she lengthens each breath, filling and emptying her lungs in preparation. Seal-turtles can swim for miles before they need to surface, she can't. Her breath stutters and she carefully controls it again.

In and out, in and out.

The ice is cool beneath her snow boots, the chill of the poles is nothing to scoff at and it doesn't take long before you start to forget the baking heat of her home. (She hasn't been back in almost three years; she is so close to-)

In and out, in and out.

She's wearing a specially designed suit, lightweight, nearly as white as the pristine snow around her, good at insulating her. It won't be helpful underwater but it is still better than swimming in full armour.

In and out, in and out.

She watches as more turtle-seals slip under the ice, they are taking their young with them so there must be frequent air holes, the young cannot swim as far as the adults without pause. Still farther than she can. (She does not think about the fact that the adults can hold their breath for _hours_.)

In and out, in and out.

Fire Bending comes from the breath, all her instructors have beaten into her (apart from her Aunt, she was softer with her lessons, patience for a slow student) but breathing is far more than just a tool for bending. If she breathes correctly her dao practice goes smoothly, is she breathes correctly climbing up cliffs to get to air nomad settlements comes more easily. If she breathes correctly her pounding heart settles a little and the fear that twists her stomach loosens a little.

In and out, in and out.

It is quiet here, nothing except for her, the ocean and the moon. Then stars are outclassed tonight, with the moon shining, whole and watchful. She slips into the water, not letting the cold punch the breath from her.

In and out, in and out.

She swims.

#

He's small. Thin and round faced, a child. She's carried him through the snow of a raging blizzard and he felt heavy, a weight pushing her down. But in the cave he's... _young_. She can't remember ever feeling as young as he looks. She watches the blizzard instead of his face because then she can forget about sledding down ice ramps while he shrieked with glee in her good ear.

She needs him to restore her honour, to regain her standing, to go _home_.

(She carefully doesn't think of hushed breaths, of fear locking up her limbs, of hard looks that pierced like spears and said more than thin lips ever would. She also doesn't think of Azula, left alone in the rattle-vipers nest of a court, left alone with their _mother_. Azula's clever, too clever to be caught up in a trap like Zuko, she'll survive. Zuko just hopes surviving won't burn too much of Azula away. Azula's awful but she has their mother's favour and that is a tough burden to carry.)

But in all the years of searching she hadn't thought she'd be going home on the broken backs of children. Well, one child. It isn't fair, she wants to scream, but life has never been fair, just a series of impossible choices with traps waiting under every move.

She won't hurt him, she knows (outside of the usual bangs and scrapes from capturing him), she won't kill him either. She'll just...have to make him see why fighting the Fire Nation isn't a good idea. He's an air bender, raised with the monks so he probably follows their 'do no harm' philosophy in most regards. It probably won't be difficult to persuade him that there doesn't need to be a war; that if the other nations peaceably surrender everything will be better.

It's at least two weeks by sea to the Fire Nation capitol from here so she'll have time. Two weeks will be enough, it has to be.

Her face throbs as she marshals up her arguments, preparing her reasons as to why the Avatar should join the Fire Nation and bring peace to the world. She's healed since her ship exploded but she's still tender, her ribs are sore and the bruises linger. One on her thigh is still black though the edges have turned a greenish colour.

She's desperately thirsty but knows better than to just shove a mouthful of snow into her mouth. She needs to conserve her energy. Carefully she retrieves a small waterproof pouch from her boot and fills it with clean snow. She sits with the pouch in her hands, carefully warming it until the snow melts. She keeps going until the pouch is full of lukewarm water. She should really sterilise it before drinking but the pouch wasn't designed to withstand boiling water. She heats it up as much as she dares before opening the pouch and sucking the steaming warmth from the top of the liquid. It's an old, fairly useless, technique her aunt showed her when she was trying to teach Zuko how to brew tea, a way of increasing the cooling convection.

Greedily she drinks down the entire pouch, feeling a little strength return to her at the hot liquid.

The Avatar stirs in his bounds and Zuko watches, warily for signs of waking. After long enough that she doesn't think he is waking she turns back to the falling snow and fills up her pouch again.

By the time the Avatar does begin to wake the blizzard has lightened. It's still snowing but not as heavily. Soon they need to leave this crevice of a cave.

"Stay still." She barks, pressing the Avatar, bound head to toe in rope, back against the wall. He looks at her with wide eyes. She doesn't think it is only fear that causes that expression. (She hopes not, she's never really wanted to scare people. Not the way Azula and her mother always scare _her_.)

"Here, it's just water. I don't know how long you've been out." Zuko carefully tips his head back and offers the pouch. He eyes her warily for a moment before obediently opening his mouth. It's messy; Zuko has no practice in giving someone with bound hands water, so half it ends up missing his mouth and lands on his bright orange clothes, soaking the thin fabric.

"Hold still. No one wants wet clothes in this temperature." She orders again, heating up her hands and using them to dry off his clothes.

"Wow, did you just fire bend me dry? I didn't know you could do that with Fire Bending but it makes sense, it can't all be fire balls and stuff." He says excitedly, trying to peer closer at her despite the fact he's still tied up. With the good rope - she stole it from Zhao.

"It's not real Fire Bending, just kid stuff." She shrugs feeling oddly bashful at the wide eyed wonder. "I used to have to dry my clothes a lot."

"How can any part of bending not be 'real'? Any Fire Bending is real Fire Bending otherwise it wouldn't be bending." The Avatar points out. Zuko frowns, there is a big difference between master benders and the stuff taught to beginners but it isn't really worth explaining because he isn't exactly wrong either.

"Did you used to go out in the monsoons a lot?" The Avatar asks randomly.

"What?" She's forgotten how bewildering he is, how his attention is like a rabbit-sparrow bouncing from one thing to the next in leaps too quick and obscure to follow.

"You said you had to dry your clothes a lot, and from what I remember of the monsoon season the Fire Nation gets a lot of rain. Or it did a hundred years ago." He droops at the last and Zuko's stomach twists in knots.

"No. I mean, yes. The monsoon season is very...wet." She says a little lamely, feeling like her tongue is too thick for her mouth. "I wasn't allowed out when it was raining."

One of the first good memories she has after she was banished (after the Agni Kai) was of being on a small Earth Kingdom island when a storm rumbled in and for once there were no harried servants making sure she and Azula were safely inside their rooms. Her Aunt didn't try very hard to make her go inside and take shelter, she let her just stand in the rain and feel the grasping dry earth get sodden in moments; the rain so thick she had difficulty breathing. She remembers the way lightning flashed over head, how the clouds boomed but mostly the way her hair clung and stuck to her, her clothes pressed against her rapidly cooling skin. She'd felt so alive in that moment, no one's eyes on her but the soft look on her aunts face while she watched from the shelter of an outdoor tea room.

"So how come you had to dry your clothes a lot? If it wasn't the rain?"

"I got knocked into the pond a lot as a kid." Zuko answers, rolling her shoulders. 

Azula had made a game of it, how often she could get away with pushing her in or, even more fun for Azula, how often she could get Zuko to trip herself in. Every time it happened Zuko would get scolded for messing up her clothes and her shoulders pinched for not taking proper care of the silk. She'd learnt how to dry her clothes step by step, carefully enough that the fabric wasn't ruined or wrinkled, no water stains. It had been an exercise in control almost too much for her fumbling Fire Bending as a kid and by the time she'd perfected it Azula had grown bored of the game because Zuko was no longer getting punished.

"Huh. That doesn't sound very fun." The Avatar frowns.

"It wasn't. It upset the turtle-ducks." When the turtle-ducks were still there, Azula had scared them off thoroughly after their father disappeared.

"Aw." The Avatar looks genuinely distraught at the thought of upsetting turtle-ducks. Zuko's stomach twists again and she has to regulate her breathing. She is a Princess of the Fire Nation, Crown Princess; she will fail her country if she is soft.

  
#

"Like this?" Aang completes the Kata and looks over hopefully.

"Keep your legs higher. This Kata is high like air bending, smooth like water bending and grounded with a root like earth bending." Zuko tells him, arms folded over her chest.

"Does most Fire Bending incorporate other bending styles?" Aang asks, falling out of the stance with his humming-fly attention span.

"No, that's just how I'm explaining it. I thought it might help for you to overlap what you've learnt with each discipline rather than treat each bending style like something completely new." Zuko explains, gesturing.

"But they are different." Aang points out reasonably, sitting cross legged on the ground. 

It's not break time but she'll give him this. Besides, she's learnt that he needs these side trips from a defined lesson otherwise he can't concentrate at all. It drives her mad, this flittering from one subject to the next but she tries to keep her temper, her Aunt was always the voice of calm in their lessons and Zuko is aware those lessons went a lot better for her than the ones with her tutors.

"Yes they are," She agrees, "But you bend all four elements, there's got to be some overlap for you otherwise how would the Avatar use more than one bending style at once?"

"I never thought of it like that. Usually it's about going from one style to another, not combining them."

"Well, you're the only person in the world who can bend more than one element." She shrugs. "Things are always going to be a bit different for you."

"Yeah." Aang agrees looking glum. Coal and ash, now what?

"You're an inventive kid; you're going to do things no one has ever thought of before." Zuko says, awkwardly reaching out to pat him on the shoulder. Casual touch like this is far from comfortable (she really needs to practice, she has no idea what she is doing) but it seems to work well enough.

"Thanks, Sifu hotman!" Aang beams, practically bouncing in place. Zuko resists the urge to lean back; he is _not_ going to hug her (now if she repeats that enough it might even be true).

"I didn't say anything that isn't true." She scowls.

There's a blur of movement then-

There are arms. Clinging. Squeezing. Zuko has to quell the urge to _kill it dead_. 

She is very controlled, she doesn't set anything on fire, she doesn't reach for her knife and she doesn't elbow the leech attached to her.

She slowly lifts her hand and pats his arrow before pressing her palm against it and (gently) firmly pushing him away to arms length.

"Do they not hug in the Fire Nation any more?" Aang asks, looking wounded.

"I-uh-I think they do? I mean Aunt always hugged Lu Ten so-"

And there are arms constricting her again. This time, impossibly, tighter.

Zuko stares at a slow drifting cloud and resists the urge toss Aang off the cliff edge. There is no point, she reminds herself, it wouldn't do anything, he is an air bender.

Somewhere Toph is cackling at her pain she can just tell.

Zuko tries to prod at Aang to let go but he just _squeezes tighter._

Alright, serious measures time.

"I'll make you do thirty hot-squats if you don't let go of me right now." Zuko promises and just like that Aang is on the other side of their training grounds. She grins.

"So you opted to do twenty-nine hot-squats, good for you." 

"Aw, no fair." Aang complains.

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo...author says, striding into the room a year late without starbucks because we're not allowed. Yo!
> 
> Hopefully it won't be another year until I finish up more of this au but please don't hold your breath.


End file.
